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I am in New York. My aunt suffered a stroke and although she is sometimes forgetful and aphasic, she has many periods of lucidity and good speech where we have been able to talk to her about power of attorney. She would like me to be the agent. Having talked about it with her, she has a good understanding of what it means and that she doesn't actually lose the ability to control her own finances. She was about to sign an apartment lease just before her stroke. Although we don't know if she will be able to move in due to her medical condition, she is anxious about signing the lease (the landlord will give her a medical exemption to break the lease if she cannot move in). There is a deadline for signing the lease and we don't know if it can be brought to her for signing. If not, then only someone designated POA can sign the lease for her.


The problem is that due to COVID restrictions, there can be only one visitor per patient; that visitor is me (the prospective agent) and under new NY law we need a notary and TWO witnesses. At the hospital it is very difficult to find a notary, and we can't even bring in two family members to be the witnesses due to the visitor restrictions, much less bring in a visiting notary. Someone said the nurses could witness if we found a hospital staff notary, but then my aunt was moved to another floor and the nurses seem not to know about this.


Someone told us a social worker could help but we just can't seem to find the hospital social worker either. I wish to God my aunt had done the POA before she had a medical issue but you know older people, they think they have all the time in the world...


I think we are out of luck and I'm just out of ideas for who to ask for help.

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I agree, someone is a notary.
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medical usually has at least one notary. and the also have staff who will step in to be witnesses. same situation with business office.
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Thanks. It is next to impossible to find a notary in the hospital though because of short staffedness due to COVID. Patient advocate office wasn't much help. She keeps being moved to different floors and every time it seems I have to start over inquiring about notaries and witnessing.
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Prepare the documents as she and you discussed.
Send them to the facility with a mobile notary.
You don't have to be there.
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Call the Patient Advocate department at the hospital. This is not something that nurses should be expected to know.

I will wager that there is a notary on staff in the business office at the hospital. It the patient advocacy office is unhelpful, go directly to the business office.
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Isthisrealyreal Sep 2021
Yep, that was where I found a notary for my dads POA and a nurse was one of the witnesses, precovid, I know that another one would have happily signed the POA.
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